Computer help forum: Do you trust your computer repair shop?

How safe is your data on your computer when you take it in for a repair? What can a person do? Should you remove the hard drive ahead of time, and if the hard drive is the problem then what? Is there a way to lock data securely? What do persons do in high security situations? Once when I took my computer in and offered my password, the owner of the shop said that he didn't need it as they had a program to go around it.

I had a problem with overheating with a laptop while under extended warranty. I took it in and they fixed the problem and in the process restored it to factory settings. If you don't back your system up before taking it in for repairs, you're taking a risk of something like that happening. The repair did fix my problem though - I had a bad driver I never would've suspected. The laptop came back from the shop with no other adverse affects. It was repaired under an extended warranty I had with (the now defunct) Circuit City.

This is just one example of the many, many reasons folks need to always back up their systems.

I think that one option would be to have a second hard drive with just Windows and a few files and programs on it. If I need to take my computer into a shop, then I can swap drives before I take it in and then replace the original one after the repair.

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